IBM Spectrum Storage – New Use Cases for Tape…

IBM’s recent storage announcement was chock full of new solutions and enhancements to an already strong storage line-up. As one fellow analyst put it, “It is difficult to comprehend the enormity of the announcement.” As a result, this blog will focus on one of the newly announced products that may get lost in the shuffle—the TS1160 tape drive, the latest addition to the IBM tape storage product line. Is tape dead? No, it’s not! Tape is part of the bigger storage picture, and is integral to IBM’s modern data protection and archiving strategy.

And just like the IBM mainframe, tape doesn’t look to be going away anytime soon. Not only does the company continue to add new higher capacity, higher performance tape drives, and state-of-the-art tape libraries, but IBM Research continues to make investments in tape technology that will drive down cost while dramatically increasing tape density (IBM has demonstrated the ability to record 201 gigabits per square inch). With that and new use cases in hyperscale environments and for addressing enterprise cyberattack and ransomware threats, the future looks bright for tape storage.